CHAPTER ONE #3
At least that isn’t a lie. I don’t want her to worry about me.
I am worried about her, though. Which brings me back to the situation at hand.
Her prison pen pal wanting to meet her in real life.
So for the next hour, I keep our focus on her situation.
We even make a pros and cons list—her favorite and, secretly, my favorite too—about her going to see him.
She tells me this is how girls get kidnapped or worse, and I agree with her.
This is a bad idea, through and through.
But somewhere along the way, it becomes clear, to me at least, that she’s going to go see him anyway.
And God, that terrifies me. The last thing I remember before going to sleep in the living room beside my best friend is that Bo Porter better not kidnap my best friend.
Or I’ll hunt him and all his friends down and make them pay.
Something wakes me up after a while.
Something familiar. Something that gets my heart racing. Banging in my chest. It steals all my sleep and leaves me alert. Wide awake, restless. Alive. I don’t know how much time has passed, but I see Reverie stretched out on the couch while I’ve been curled up in the armchair adjacent to it.
The armchair directly in front of the big window.
It’s the middle of the night and the street beyond is pitch-black.
Not even a streetlamp. We used to have one but now it’s broken, has been for months now.
The drapes are open and the living room is brightly lit.
Carefully, I climb to my feet as if I’m on a stage, on display.
With trembling hands, I pick up a throw off the back of the armchair and drape it over Reverie, who doesn’t even twitch.
My legs shake as I move around the room, switching off lights, checking the air-conditioning setting.
The back of my neck prickles as I check the front door and make sure it’s locked even though I know I don’t need to.
I know I locked it when I came home earlier.
I only do these things to pace myself. To check the rush of blood in my veins, the heat swirling in my belly.
The first signs of life I’ve felt all day. I also do it to tease.
For the anticipation before my big performance.
Once I’m done making the rounds of our tiny apartment, all in the full view of the window, with a sway in my hips and that constant prickling that has spread from the back of my neck to the rest of my body, I head to the hallway, leading to our bedrooms. By the time I let myself into my room, my entire body is shaking.
My belly is trembling and the place between my thighs is swollen. And wet.
So wet that as I pad across the room to my glass window, in the full view of the street below, I can feel my thighs slipping against each other.
I should be embarrassed about it, about how turned on I am.
If not embarrassed, then I should be scared of it, and if not that either, then at the very least, I should try to fight it.
Try to fight the intensity, the heat. This pull.
Like a rope being tugged around my center.
By him. The man who’s watching me through the window. For whom I’m putting on this show.
So there’s a man, see. A man who watches me.
Who watches my every move, follows me to places.
Stalks me from afar. At night, he stands across the street and watches me.
He watches me moving around in my bedroom, doing homework in my living room.
He watches me getting ready for bed, sliding under the covers.
I think sometimes he also watches me while I’m sleeping, but of course I can’t be sure.
I wonder if he watched me on my date tonight too.
We weren’t seated by the window, but that shouldn’t have stopped him.
It hasn’t stopped him before because I know he has watched me on my dates.
He’s resourceful, my stalker.
Also hungry.
I can feel it. Or maybe it’s me who’s hungry because I can’t wait any longer.
So standing at the window and looking outside as if locking my eyes with his, I reach up and undo my hair.
I remove the pins and let the mass of my blond curls loose down my back.
Then I reach back and unzip my dress. One by one, I slide the tiny straps down my arms before pushing the red dress I wore down my body.
I will admit that while I went on a date with another man, I wore this dress for him.
Short and tight, my dress showed off every little curve in my body.
From my perky breasts to my rounded ass.
He likes to watch, doesn’t he, so I made it easy for him.
I made it easy for him to see the shape of my body.
I also wore my underwear for him, black and lacy.
I hope he appreciates how sheer the fabric is and how if he wanted to, he could see my pink and hard nipples through it.
Once I’ve shed my clothes, I turn around and sashay my way over to the bed.
Again, in the clear view of the window. I climb on and lie down, my head on my soft pillow and my nearly naked body sliding onto the covers.
I start by running my fingers lightly over my collarbone, brushing my throat lightly.
Before I move down and caress the valley between my breasts.
I moan at the sensation, my nipples puckering up even more, my tits feeling all heavy and swollen.
I always wanted bigger tits, but the way he makes me feel, how much he turns me on, causing them to swell up and ride high with lust, I don’t care about the size of my breasts anymore.
All I care about is playing with them, flicking my nipples and plumping my achy tits.
All the while squeezing my thighs and writhing my hips.
When I’ve tortured myself enough, I leave one hand playing at my tits and creep the other down, grazing my trembling and sweaty belly, and slip it inside my panties.
Gosh, I can smell myself, my pussy, the lust leaking out of it.
I touch the spot, my swollen, aching clit, that came alive as soon as I woke up in the living room and felt him watching me, and I moan.
I do it so loudly that for a second I think my sleeping friend will hear me out in the living room. The entire street will hear me.
He will hear me.
And if he does, will he come closer? Will he abandon his shadows and come to me?
Stand on the other side of my window and press his hand to the glass so he can see better.
Maybe even open the window and climb inside.
Oh my God, if he climbed inside and stood beside the bed, I’d come all over my moving hand.
And if he bent over me, reached his hand out and touched me, I know I’d moan so loud the whole city would hear me.
I know that.
But I also know that will never happen. That’s the appeal of all of this.
He’ll never get closer or climb through that window.
He’ll never touch me because that isn’t what this is about.
He only wants to watch, and I only want to feel alive for a few moments.
I only want to feel like something in my life is safe, is still mine and doesn’t belong to my father.
So I let myself imagine. I let myself create a fantasy in which he does touch me.
He replaces my fingers with his, calloused and big.
Thick and long. So thick and long that if he slides his digit in, he’ll stretch me out.
He’ll stretch my hole out and it’ll hurt so good.
He may even bust through that barrier, my virginity, with just his finger and make me bleed and come, all in one breath.
And when I’m all soft and sleepy after my orgasm, he’ll bend over my body and tell me how much he hated seeing me with another man.
He’ll tell me he was this close to beating the shit out of him and taking me away.
Because I’m his and he’s mine. This is when I come, when he calls me his in my dreams. My Phantom.